


Mother Tongue

by Soujin



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: F/M, Incest, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:50:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soujin/pseuds/Soujin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mordred is more like his father than he'd like. Morgause exploits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother Tongue

When he thinks back, far back to the first time he remembers, what he remembers is his mother. He remembers Morgause’s soft pale hand on his head, guiding him towards the door. “Boy,” she says, in the old tongue. “Son. This way.”

She never calls the other ones like this (he remembers this). She doesn’t like the Orkney language, doesn’t like the way it ties her to Lot and these cold islands, and for the most part she doesn’t like the other ones, either. There are four of them--Gawain, who is seven, and firm and strong and ruddy. He laughs the most. All the maids in the castle are taken with him. It is never any trouble for Morgause to find someone to look after him.

It’s harder after Gawain. Agravain is five and surly. Doesn’t like to be helped. Gaheris--he’s caught servants in the corridors saying things about Gaheris. That Gaheris is touched. That he was born unluckily and the Folk won’t bless him. Sometimes they even say he’s a changeling, but he has Morgause’s looks, just badly arranged. He’s ugly and small, smaller than he should be, and he hardly ever smiles; his eyes don’t settle on things.

Gareth is youngest, only a year old. If there’s a favourite after Gawain, it’s Gareth, whose face is always shining. His hair is golden and looks too fine and bright to have come from Lot. The servants remark on this, too.

But Morgause calls none of them son except Mordred. She lets him stay with her when the others are sent away. Her hands tighten in his black hair and she tells him secrets, promises him things. She says that one day he will bring his father back to her.

“You have his looks,” she says, cupping his chin in one hand. “He’ll know thee when he sees thee.”

He is her safe passage back to Camelot someday. Someday because of him his father will see her again, and forgive her. Morgause is a proud woman, but she loves his father, he knows she loves his father, and Mordred who is so like Arthur will buy her a second chance with him.

What he remembers after that is Gawain teaching him. Gawain, eldest of them except for Mordred himself, has the best hand with weapons, the best nature. Sometimes Mordred thinks, God, Orkney was lucky that Gawain was heir and none of the others. Everyone loves him: he’s easy to love. He’s not always wisest, but he’s just and decent and honest, he never takes sides, he hears everyone out. When he was thirteen and Lot was dead, Morgause let him mind the treasury and he was better at it than the minister they’d had before. When he flirts, he flirts kindly and sweetly.

He’ll rule Orkney well. Mordred’s thankful (he’s thankful it’s not him).

Gawain teaches them all to joust and fight and ride their horses well. He teaches them to clean their weapons--all the things Lot should have taught them, but Lot was killed by King Pellinore the year before Mordred turned eleven.

Morgause manages them well enough. She hires the monks to teach them Latin and geometry, and finds a knight to squire Gawain when he’s old enough, but she doesn’t care, it’s clear she doesn’t care what happens to any of them as long as they do nothing stupid. Even Mordred has fallen from favour, now that Clarissant is born.

Gawain doesn’t mind. Mordred tells himself he doesn’t care. Agravain does--he’s surlier now than ever and argues with everyone. Gareth doesn’t understand.

As for Gaheris, he’s getting sicker. Thin and long-limbed, he’s as graceless as a newborn calf, as easily knocked over. His eyes are black and still don’t settle. When no one’s keeping track of him (and it’s easy to forget) he goes down to the sea for hours at a time and sits with the selkies until the tide covers him, and he comes back wet and shivering but sometimes a little calmer than before.

Mordred watches him. It isn’t his business to run after Gaheris, he isn’t his brother’s keeper. The truth, though, is that Gaheris is clumsy enough to attract Morgause’s attention, and she isn’t kind. She makes him worse. The sick place in his eyes is worse than ever after she speaks to him. Mordred doesn’t know what she says, but he can guess--it’s no great matter to guess with his mother.

And that’s the third memory. Morgause is dead now, dead by Gaheris’ own unsteady hand. But before then, what Mordred remembers is that he went to see her.

She grants him an audience easily enough, lets him into the apartments he hasn’t seen since he was thirteen. Her maid brings hot milk and pours for both of them. The cup she offers Mordred is moulded clay, cool and dark despite the steam that comes from within. Morgause settles back in her chair to watch him.

“Well?” she asks, in careful Cornish (she doesn’t speak to him in the old tongue any more). “What do you want with me?”

“Gaheris. You’re breaking him down.”

“It’s nothing to me if he’s not strong enough to take his mother’s advice,” she says coolly.

“He’s not well. He’s going to do something to himself.”

“No, he isn’t.” Morgause drinks quietly. “He’ll do it to me when he does. Far-seeing is useless for the most part, I’ve told you that. I told you years ago. Unclear pictures. I knew from the moment he was born that he would do me some injury. Enough of it.” She settles back and smiles at him gently, a soft smile. “I mean to ask you for something, do you agree. Wilt do aught for me?”

She’s lying. He watches her over the rim of his cup, the tilt of her head, the inviting curve of her mouth. There’s something she’s hoping to take from him dishonestly.

He’s become skilful at knowing when she’s being untruthful. What he still doesn’t know, what he can’t now discern, is what it is she wants.

“Oh?” he says, his voice blunt, just surly enough that he could earn a slap for it.

“Art like thy father when thou’rt displeased.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, is that what you want to tell me? How I’m my father’s son? I’m aware of that by now, you’ve said it often enough. Everyone says it. I thought you’d at least take the trouble to be original.”

“In every way.” She rises. “Mordred. Thou art my only true son, the blood of my blood. But for thy father’s grandfather thou wouldst have been mine entire, of no other heritage.”

“Thank Jesu for old Uther. Don’t you know incestuous children are always mad or idiots?”

“Don’t fight me. I love thee.”

“The hell!”

“The best of all my children.”

“Oh, that explains everything. It would be hard to love anyone _less_ than you love them. That’s my boast, my mother loves me best of the children she’s tearing to pieces. What do you tell yourself when you’re trying to sleep at night? It’s all for their own good? Leading Gareth on, driving Gaheris mad. Next you’ll tell me you love me more than the brother you lied into bedding you.”

Her face darkens in hurt, and for once he can’t tell if it’s true or false. “Not more than him,” she says, very softly.

Mordred remembers what happens next, but not why. He is half blind with anger. “So I fall between nothing and nearly nothing. That does sound right, doesn’t it? What is it you want from a man? That he be your blood _and_ want to lie with you? Will it elevate my status if I do this?” And then he catches her by the shoulders and kisses her. He thinks he meant it to frighten her, or make her angry, make them even. Something, anything. He doesn’t remember.

He knows he didn’t mean for her to kiss him back, her mouth still warm from her cup. Her thin, unkind hands grasp his hair, pulling hard enough to make him cry out and muffle it by biting his lip until it bleeds, and he digs his fingernails into her arms. He doesn’t mean for this. He doesn’t mean for her to push him back against the wall, and his hands to fall, searching, to her gown, seeking desperately for her laces.

Once he pulls away in revulsion, saying, “No, no, for Christ’s sake, I’m not my father-- _I’m not my father_ \--” but she silences him with her mouth, with her body.

And in the aftermath he lies in her bed. She turns to him and says, “Your father’s son.”

Mordred flinches and puts his face in his hands. “No. Jesu, no. Don’t call me that.”

Morgause gazes at him for a long moment. Her dark hair is all loose about her, spills over her shoulders, over her breasts. She waits long enough to make him look up again, demanding of himself that he not be frightened--she’s no better than him, it’s the same sin, for Christ’s sake, though they be damned for it-- Then, in the old tongue, she says, “My son.”

After that he doesn’t try to remember anything.


End file.
